Fall 2015 Children's Flying Starts

We highlight seven notable children's and YA debuts this season.

In author Kevin Sands’s estimation, “Apothecaries are really cool—they work with potions, poisons, secret codes.” That flash of an idea first popped into his mind several years back, when Sands was teaching high school math and physics and was also searching for something to write about.

Stephanie Tromly has lived in no fewer than five countries—born in the Philippines, she grew up in Hong Kong, spent a year in Brunei with her family, moved to the U.S. for college, settled in Canada, and is currently back in Hong Kong.

"When I came out as queer in college, I sought books that would reflect me,” Alex Gino says. “It was the late ’90s, and it was barren. I thought, hey, this book doesn’t exist, and I wish I could have read it someday.”

Guojing’s debut, a wordless picture book, follows a small child through a mythical land where she befriends magical creatures. The book, The Only Child, came from a personal place for the artist, but the appeal resonates beyond the borders of Guojing’s native China.

There’s a dense law book, rife with footnotes and legal jargon, inside Nicholas Gannon’s Brooklyn home, a daily reminder of his years toiling inside a Manhattan cubicle. “I look at it every morning to remind myself of what could happen if I don’t do my work,” the full-time author says.

Nicola Yoon had the kind of YA launch that authors dream about. Her novel,Everything, Everything, about Madeline, a girl so allergic to nearly everything that she must live inside a carefully sealed environment but finds love through her window in the boy next door, debuted as a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Ali Benjamin grew up in a house filled with books, but she recalls that she was often quick to lose interest. However, “those books I did love as a kid are a part of me in a way others aren’t,” she says. Among those that resonated with her are The Secret Garden, Harriet the Spy, and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.